Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Just few minutes ago, I finished a conversation with one of my friends presently living in one of the Metros of India, and got kind of forced to write this. I had this inside myself for a pretty long time but never felt that urge to let the rest of the world know about it. Here you go :

I was born sometime in mid 70’s in the city of Calcutta, once the capital of undivided India and the so called cultural hub of the country. The socio-economic and political scenario of the city was passing through a phase of transition. A new political party was about to take over the governance in the state of West Bengal. I grew up as a legitimate citizen of Calcutta and was fortunate enough to receive decent education from one of the reputed institutions of the city. Childhood in the 80’s never really allowed a child to become at all conscious about a lifestyle, difference between basic necessities and comforts, steep competition, complex relationships, kick-start to career race and so on. Life was not a deal then, unlike today. A couple of generations emerged, prevailed and moved forward in respective lives. The city, however, stayed as it was.

The process started slowly, sometime in between the period of late 80’s and early 90’s. I began to see few people around me leaving the city for higher studies or job. By the time I completed my Graduation sometime around ’96-97, the process gained a real good momentum. It ruled for the next 5-6 years and the parts of the couple of generations got scattered in different parts of the world. Needless to say, lot of my friends, relatives, ex-colleagues and known people lives out of this city today, and they all are settled happily.

Excuse me, not a single person I know was/is happy. The reasons varied/varies but the fact remained/remains the same.

Our friends who said “Good bye” to Calcutta had good enough reasons to leave. They had either uncertain futures here or much better opportunities elsewhere. Whatever were the reasons, I heard almost all of them cursing and abusing this city before their departures.

Then came the second phase when our friends were settled down for about 6 months in the new cities. They started sending stinkers to people back in Calcutta in the form of appreciation of the city they were living in, and hatred for Calcutta. Though they all managed to come down to Calcutta during the Durga Puja/Diwali and other festive occasions to accumulate all the fun, which were eventually not available at their places of work, for obvious reasons.

The third phase arrived after a couple of years when they started missing Calcutta for reasons like delicious food, endless chat sessions with friends & families, celebration parties, cinemas and theatres and so on. I guess, they were all missing their lives.

I feel genuinely happy today to see all of them doing well and happily spending their lives with/without families, in Facebook pages. They get linked through the chat windows, mails or occasional phone calls. Their short visits to their hometown enables me and others who are living in Calcutta, to meet them and recall the funs of the past. I find excruciating pain in their eyes which they can’t hide, whenever they are about to leave the city after each holiday gets over. I try and understand the agony.

Till the above, things were fine and normal. I was on my visit to my FB page when one of my friends pinged me

Hey, how much is Hilsa in Kolkata?

Ranging between 350 to 650….I answered

Cool man. You people are so lucky. It’s 1200 here. And how much is Mango?